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Egypt: Predynastic

The term Predynastic denotes Egypt before the historically recorded sequence of kings and dynasties that starts ca. 3050 b.c. (see egypt: dynastic). Although there is no official beginning to the Predynastic, in Egyptian archaeology the term usually refers to the period that follows the appearance, ca. 5000 b.c., of a Neolithic food-producing economy in the Egyptian Nile Valley proper (as distinct from the Sahara at large). Evidence for reliance on food production using domesticated plants and animals (principally sheep, goat, pigs, cattle, wheat, and barley) occurs late in the Nile Valley relative to the fertile crescent of the Near East, possibly suggesting that hunting/gathering remained viable for a longer time span in the rich environment of the Nile floodplain. Once adopted, however, food production is linked with a long-term process of population growth, sedentism, and increasing social complexity in Predynastic cultures in the Nile Valley. The study of Predynastic Egypt has primarily been focused on the development of a series of different cultures in both northern and southern Egypt during the course of the two millennia from ca. 5000 to ca. 3000 b.c. The Predynastic period culminated in a process of political and territorial conquest during the second half of the Fourth Millennium b.c. (ca. 3400–3050) that included the expansion of the southern Egyptian cultural tradition over the rest of the country. The emergence of a politically powerful elite, governmental institutions, royal artistic and architectural styles, and the hieroglyphic writing system can be traced during the terminal stages of the Predynastic period, setting the stage for Egypt’s transition to the Dynastic period.

The study of Predynastic Egypt differs in certain ways from that of Dynastic Egypt. The lack of writing until the very end of the Predynastic means that archaeology of the Predynastic does not have at its disposal the written evidence that begins to be increasingly important with the transition to the Dynastic period. This difference is, however, not as pronounced as might appear to be the case since during many periods of Egypt’s Dynastic history, the volume of written documents and inscriptions is a small and very selective corpus of material. The archaeology of Predynastic Egypt has been, in recent decades, one of the most rapidly changing areas of work in Egypt, with new insights and discoveries continuing to reshape understanding of the early origins of Egyptian civilization.

Although the concept of the Predynastic period fits well with modern ideas of the distinction between prehistory and history, it is important to recognize that the idea of the Predynastic has been rooted to a large degree in the Egyptians’ own ideas of their earliest past. One of the central religious and political ideas of ancient Egypt was the concept of the Sema-Tawy, or “Unification-of-the-Two-Lands.” The Egyptians organized their history into a sequence of royal dynasties (a version of this that was recorded by Manetho, a priest of the Ptolemaic period, being the basis for the Dynastic history we use today). The beginning of these dynasties was the unification (Sema-Tawy) of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt by a king Menes, ca. 3100 b.c. Menes was the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty and according to Egyptian tradition founded the capital city of Memphis near the southern apex of the Nile delta so he could live there and rule over this newly unified kingdom.

For many years it was believed that the tradition of the Sema-Tawy was a historical reality and scholars frequently followed ancient Egyptian tradition by defining the Predynastic period as Egypt before the unification by Menes. Evidence suggesting that the Egyptian hieroglyphic